Jeff Bezos, joined by his brother Mark, an 82-year-old former pilot and an 18-year-old teen, will embark on the riskiest journey of his life - a trip to space.
Nine days after Richard Branson flew to the edge of space aboard his VSS Unity, Jeff Bezos, former Amazon chief, is set to go 100 kilometres above the surface of Earth on Tuesday. The billionaire is hitching a ride on his company Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft that will lift off at 6.30 PM from the high desert plains of West Texas. They will travel in a capsule with the biggest windows flown into space, offering stunning views of the Earth. New Shepard, built by Bezos' company Blue Origin, is designed to serve the burgeoning market for space tourism. The passengers include the oldest person to go into space - Ms Funk - and the youngest, student Oliver Daemen. "I'm excited. People keep asking me if I'm nervous. I'm not really nervous, I'm curious. I want to know what we're going to learn," Bezos said in an interview with CBS News. "We've been training. This vehicle's ready, this crew is ready, this team is amazing. We just feel really good about it."In the 1960s, Ms Funk was one member of a group of women called the Mercury 13, who underwent the same screening tests as male astronauts, but who never got to fly into space. The company's six-seater capsule and 59-foot rocket will tear toward the edge of space on an 11-minute flight that'll reach more than 60 miles above Earth.
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